


Vapor

by consider_the_nexus



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Brief blow job and fingering, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, It's a little more detailed than "it was nice" but it's not why we're here, Let Juno Say Fuck Brigade, Missing Scene, Nonbinary Juno Steel, Not Featuring: Intergalactic man of mystery Nureyev, Not the healthiest of sex, Other, Peter's doing better than Juno but that's not saying much, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, Trans Peter Nureyev, Whump, gratuitous use of pet names, it's s1 juno what did you expect, the author thinks she's kevin vibert, things that could loosely be described as man in glass spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:55:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22166728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consider_the_nexus/pseuds/consider_the_nexus
Summary: "Well, you're missing out, Nureyev. Best way to lose your lunch is with someone else, preferably someone who's also drunk off their ass, or having a bad trip, or whatever's got your head in the toilet. Or.""Or?""Somebody who won't judge you, is the point.""And are you done judging me, love?"I know he just wants me to trust him. I can't find the words to say that I already do, that I have since we got into the Ruby 7 at gunpoint and don't plan to look back. “I think I might be.”Soon, I’ll play too deep in his head and find memories worse than anything my overactive imagination can conjure up, and ones that will endear me to him more than any anecdote about stealing from the rich to give to the infirm. But first, he’ll tighten his arms around me and whisper "I’m glad", breath hot and wet on the shell of my ear. First, I’ll fall asleep in his arms, my hand falling out of his hair and coming to rest on the back of his neck. First, every last one of my fears about how it will feel for him to hold me will come true and I won’t even regret it.And, first, I’ll be dragged bodily from his arms, and we’ll start again.+Peter is touchy. Juno has mixed feelings.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 29
Kudos: 148





	Vapor

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, I'm here with a very specific kind of fic, several years late and as new content is coming out that everyone else in the fandom is really excited to make fic for but I have to get this off my chest first before I can even think about doing anything that follows more recent plotlines and developments. I mean, was I just _not_ supposed to write a hurt/comfort with extra hurt missing scene fic for a fandom that contains canonical torture?
> 
> This is uhhhh. Pretty dark, actually, I realized as I typed out all the additional content warnings (in the end notes). Please let me know if I missed anything. If any of that stuff is gonna make you have a bad time, maybe this isn't for you!
> 
> Special thanks to Queenie of queenieofaces and Ace of All_Star_Angel for peer pressuring me into listening to the Penumbra. You two were right, this podcast is my jam.

It doesn't bother me that I dream about the kiss.

A kiss like the one Nureyev planted on me, you expect to dream about that. For it to haunt your lips, the lapels of your coat, your whole apartment; to bleed into your waking hours like a dark stain that leaves every other sensation lacking. That, I expected. Doesn't bother me.

What does is: All the other touches. His arms around my shoulders when my knees gave out under me. His leg, just barely touching my thigh while he cleaned me up. Fingers dancing along my arm, an apology for the sting of rubbing alcohol and the pinch of the suture machine and his own sluggishness. The look on his face - mouth parted, eyes shining and brow ever so slightly creased - that told me he'd like nothing more than to lean over and press his lips to my forehead. The goddamn. _Hushing_ while he did it. That delicate, unexpected little noise, so alien and strange in his deep register - that sound follows me like a shadow. Some days I think I remember it just as it was but most times I know the constant turning it over in my mind has warped it; made it more tender, less utilitarian. More like -

"Here, detective. For your nose."

Like Peter Nureyev, extending the expensive looking pocket square from his expensive looking suit toward me, looking at the little stream of red creeping toward my mouth like it was a death sentence. He eyes me warily in a way that gives the impression he knows I wouldn't let him sweep me up into his arms again, but wishing all the same.

"Yeah, no thanks, I'm good," I snap.

I slam the bathroom door behind me and hear him mutter, "Suit yourself."

I wipe my face with toilet paper instead of silk, and restart the sluggish bleeding as I poke and prod looking for the source. It doesn't take nearly long enough, even being more meticulous than usual shoving tissue up my nose. I could hide in the bathroom forever, avoiding Peter Nureyev and his eyes and the way he makes my stomach twist. I've slept in weirder places than a bathtub.

But the never ending stream of questions still plagues me. Some the usual fare; _what are you really after, why the hell would you trust_ me. Those never seem to go away, no matter how many times I ask and get flakey, poetic non-answers, but others. _Do you_ like _cats, or do you just like drawing them? If you ever stopped moving for an hour, would you want one? And that party, was it something specific - a memory, or just wishful thinking?_ Stupid, pointless things that I hate my brain for taking the time to conjure up and yet I can't get it to stop. I need to know everything, and I want to know nothing.

The flood stops when I step back into the room, just long enough for Nureyev to look up at me over his glasses and declare, "You look ridiculous."

"Yeah, well you look." _Picturesque_. I can't say that out loud though, even if he does, laid out on the bed, all long legs and artfully disheveled hair and. Satin gingham nightgown. I wonder if he sleeps in that on the regular or if this, like the suit, is another Juno Steel special. Once I get over that blunt force trauma to the face, though, I notice the taut lines of his arms and legs holding his body just barely atop the comforter, his foot braced on the bed just so. Hidden in the performance of relaxation is the posture of a man ready to run at a moment's notice, impossible to miss if you weren't distracted by the show. "Tense."

In an instant his demeanor changes. Tight lines smooth and his hip sinks into the duvet. Too deliberate to be natural. "I suppose I am."

"Why?"

He looks back at his comms and shrugs a single shoulder, holding it by his ear a fraction of a second too long and lowering it too fluidly. "Must there be a reason?"

"Don't play games."

"We are in the middle of a job, detective." He doesn't look at me. I focus on the artificially graceful poise of his fingers. "You've been rather tense yourself, if I recall."

"Yeah, but that's." _Me_ . It's _my_ job to worry, to agonize over every way things can blow up in our faces until my muscles twist and knot over each other like a gordian nightmare. And since this heist we're on is a two man job, it follows that Nureyev should be. _Not_ that. The opposite of that, to think of things I can't, to leave every possible scenario accounted for. And until now, he had been. He'd almost lost - _actually_ lost, but if I let myself think too long about that it's sure to add itself to my ever growing pile of nightmares - what he claimed was his most prized possession and the whole time had seemed _bored._ To think it was the same man, hovering over the covers in the hotel room he'd paid for like he was afraid of what would happen if he let himself relax -

"Whatever." Just another lie.

"What ever indeed," he says with threateningly careful enunciation. A knife against a whetstone.

That moment stretches for an eternity, his words and mine hanging in the air. It coils tight around my chest and drives air from my lungs.

And then it snaps.

"Good _night_ ," he says for the third or fourth time, rolls himself up into the covers with his back to me. I'm grateful he doesn't make another appeal for me to join him, and that he seems to fall asleep right away, and doesn't know how long I stand and then sit there, paralyzed, avoiding getting into bed with him as literally as I've already done figuratively.

If I lie down, let myself fall asleep next to him under the covers, Nureyev might. _Touch_ me. Not in a malicious way: I'd prefer that, actually, the final, concrete confirmation that I couldn't trust him. Worse than a knife in my back or an unwanted hand between my legs is the thought of his foot brushing mine as we slept. Of us shifting closer together through the night until we were back to back, hip to hip. Of Nureyev secretly being rom-drom stream clingy and waking up with him wrapped around me like a scarf, breath hot and damp on the back of my neck. Of _me,_ still, after all this time, being rom-drom stream clingy. Those phantom touches sear my skin like a brand and pull the warmth from my hands and feet. Well. Okay, the feet are because my legs are asleep.

I work my way up to my knees. My hips pop like thunder in the quiet room, but as far as I can see, Nureyev doesn't so much as twitch. So I slide my hands carefully against the cold fabric, putting as much of my weight on them as I dare, and when the world doesn't end and Nureyev doesn't stir, I let the rest of my body follow, inching up like the bed is a thin sheet of ice I have to navigate without plunging into the depths below. It's silly, a ritual for kids, to keep Mom from screaming at us even as we went to her for comfort, but it works. I make my way not quite to the pillows and close my eyes but don't fall asleep. And if Nureyev tugs at the blanket in the night and makes a content little noise -

I'll wish, later, that I'd risked those agonizing touches for a few hours of sleep.

* * *

My hand still burns from Nureyev's fingers while Miasma's goons strap me down. They'd split us up moments ago, shoved him into a room just ahead of this one and I spend the entire time bracing for the sound of a laser going through his brain. _They took your gun, Steel, you've got nothing to bargain with and now they're going to kill him you goddamn idiot_ -

Then the light flickers on behind the window in front of me. Nureyev closes his eyes to avoid squinting and leans back in his chair - something like mine, but no restraints around the wrists. Just a band of what looks like leather wrapped around his chest. He inspects it. Long fingers find a wire, and in that otherwise empty room I watch dread cross his face, then resignation. A calming breath, a performative straightening of his hopelessly disheveled shirt. I can almost _see_ him box it up and tuck it away. It feels more intimate than him in his pajamas could ever be.

"Juno?"

I can hear him clearly despite the glass. I don't let myself think about why. "Hey." Miasma had just called him _thief_ , so I leave it at that. A smile, real and anxious, spreads across his face. "Looks like we're about to get smacked around a little, you up for that?"

"That's quite a leap in our relationship, detective, but it's one I'm willing to make if you are. My hard limits are loss of digits and waterboarding." The joke falls flat. He's too nervous. I don't really like the idea of the two of us tied up like this either, but I wonder what he knows about Miasma that makes him so afraid. He swallows hard and says, "Juno. Whatever happens, take care of yourself first, understand me? I'll be fine."

"Not sure why you're so convinced _you're_ going to be the one getting smacked around, our trigger happy archeologist buddy is _my_ classmate, you've just got stoic henchwoman number four in there -"

"Enough talking."

The one-two punch of my revelation and Miasma's voice hits him, and he shudders, then immediately pretends he hadn't, finally aware he's being watched. "Thief. You have cards, do you not?"

"I do." His hand disappears behind the barrier.

"You will draw a card. Juno Steel, you will tell me what it says."

"I take it I am not to _show_ him the card."

If I could imagine Miasma rolling her eyes, I think she would. "Correct."

Nureyev nods, thoughtful. "A game of psychic ability. I think I saw this on a stream, once. I, the professor, you the charming student. Could be fun, Juno."

"Yeah, somehow I doubt it. Look, lady, I had about enough cards for a lifetime yesterday, think we could pick a different centuries dead game to play?"

She scowls, grabs a remote with a single button from the otherwise barren desk, and I brace myself for a shock that never comes. Instead, Nureyev goes rigid in his seat, jaw locked around a scream he doesn't let past his teeth. "Hey hey _hey,_ what the hell are you doing to him!" I shout, even though I know perfectly well. I feel sick. That is _not_ how this is supposed to go.

" _That_ is what will happen to your thief when you fail my tests. When you ask stupid questions. When you irritate me. Do you understand, Juno Steel?"

Nureyev slumps in his seat, shivering, face drawn tight. His name dances to my tongue and I have to bite down hard to make myself say, "Hey. You okay?" 

He runs shaking hands through his hair and gives me and Miasma his best sharp smile. "Marvelous, detective. I must say, I'm enjoying the innovation, Miasma -" Her name ends in a scream he wasn't ready to swallow.

"Hey, _lay off_!"

Miasma releases the button before the words are out of my mouth. I doubt she wants to give me an even vague impression that I'm in control. "So long as you both behave, there is no pain. Do you understand, Juno Steel?"

I understand. I understand that bargaining for Nureyev's life out in the desert was probably the worst thing I could have done. Because now his wellbeing depends on _me_ doing as I'm told without a fuss, which inevitably means he's going to be _hurt_ and I'm going to have to _watch_. Just a minute in, I'm as nauseated with guilt as Nureyev is from the shocks. I should have let him die. He would have suffered less. But even now, the thought of that makes my throat swell shut with too many emotions. There's no way I'd be able to do that. I'm far too selfish.

So I close the hand he'd held in the Ruby 7 into a fist, like I can hold the contact itself; protect it the way I want to protect him. "I understand."

"Good. Thief. A card."

Nureyev reaches behind the barrier again. His arm shakes, and I think if we'd had any lunch he would have lost his by now. He's subdued; despite his bravado he's not excited about a repeat performance.

"Juno Steel."

"Yeah, on it."

I close my eyes and try to consciously find what I've stumbled head first into before. My right eye starts to throb and I can feel blood start to pool under my eyelid and it doesn't even give me anything besides the sensation of scrambling for purchase on Nureyev's mind.

"You are proving to be a poor subject, Juno Steel." Miasma's nails rap, brittle on her desk. I steal a peek at her other hand, hovering impatiently over the button. Panic, and with it a hundred largely useless words rise in my throat.

"I'm trying okay, he's slippery, which, really, probably means you can stand to work on your technique a little, your head was _real_ easy to get into, Miasma, so you should maybe sit down and chat with him, you know, once you've decided you've had enough fun _torturing him_ -"

"Juno." Nureyev sounds so goddamn _calm_ it infuriates me. "Take your time."

Miasma presses down just long enough to get a shriek out of him. " _Don't_ take your time, Juno Steel. I am not patient."

"Yeah, I'd noticed." I brace myself again, dive against the mind that's at once directly on top of my and a million miles away, and -

The image hits me like a sledgehammer. The card, the deck, Nureyev's hands in the periphery, the dark window he's trying not to catch his own reflection in. And a feeling. Half baked, not like the physical transfer of pain. More the knowledge that there _was_ pain; lingering ache in every muscle, deep tissue stinging where the metal plate meets his chest. The smell of electricity and burning flesh.

I want to call out to him. More than that, I want to be close to him. Hold him, pull him into my arms and let him rest against my shoulder, embrace that galvanizing touch I've avoided so carefully. It's hard to imagine, now, ever climbing our way out of this hole, so. What's the harm, in the narrow hours between now and whenever Miasma decides she's had enough of us, in fantasizing about one last embrace? I've never been good at comforting anyone, but I want to try. Nureyev _makes_ me want to try.

"Purple heart."

"Good," Miasma says without satisfaction. "Again."

Again. Again. On and on, for hours at least. I get faster and then slower reaching into Nureyev's head. The pressure behind my eye builds and expands to the front of my head, then the top and the back and down the sides of my neck. Blood crawls down my cheek with every card and dries there in layers. I shake with the blood loss and the headache and the phantom trembling in Nureyev's arms that I get a dose of with every card. I make too many mistakes, have to listen to too many screams.

My worst mistake is when I decide to _stay_ in Nureyev's head instead of leaving the second I get the card. I watch him flip it in real time. "Blue. Triangle," I say as it hits the desk. I hear myself through Nureyev's ears; slow and slurred and _wrong_. Feel the spike of anxiety like it's my own. He turns his eyes toward the speaker in the ceiling where my voice has been coming from all this time.

"Juno?" He's so aware of how dry his mouth is, the ache in the back of his throat, so I am too. "Are you alright?"

"Peachy."

"Again, thief." Here, in his head, I can tell exactly how much that makes him bristle.

 _We're almost at the end of the deck_ , Nureyev thinks without words. _It will be over soon, one way or another._

The card turns. I see it and hear it at the same time - "Seven. Of diamonds," I say with a mouth that feels less and less like my own.

Worry that isn't mine - _god_ , is it not mine - floods my gut. "Juno - I think you should rest."

But he's right. Something besides my own hesitation pulls me back, like my mind is a rubber band stretched to the breaking point. I slingshot back into my own head and I'm overwhelmed by what's waiting for me. My face, bloodied anew, eye fit to burst out of its socket and the rest of my brain trying to follow. Both eyes feel open, but I can't see beyond the blinding light the pain has conjured. I scream.

I run out of breath before the pain stops. I fall forward in my chair as far as the band around my ribs will let me and try to suck air into my tense body. Whether I'm actually sobbing or that's just the closest approximation to the sound I'm making, I can't tell. It's hardly the most interesting sound I'm hearing anyway.

"Shh, Juno, breathe. Shhhh. Deep breaths, love, that's it."

I blink away blood and particles of light and look up at him. Nureyev's voice is calm, but he looks like he's in agony, straining forward in his seat, brow knit together and eyes darting around the ceiling. His thumbs stroke the armrests of his chair rhythmically in what I at first assume is anxiety. Then it dawns on me: he's probably imagining the armrests are my hands, or my back, or my face. He wants to hold me, at least as much as I want to hold him. Probably almost as much as I want to be held.

One last guttural sound crawls its way up my throat, and Nureyev cracks a little. "Oh, Juno -"

"Well, that sucked."

"Again."

"No," Nureyev says. "No, he needs to rest."

I know what's coming. I'm sure Nureyev did too. His screams are so tired now, ending with whimpers instead of laughs or quips. When this one ends he leans forward as far as he can and gags. I come closer to calling him by his name than I have yet. "Hey."

"Do you need to rest, Juno Steel?"

The assistant keeping an eye on him slams Nureyev back upright. He glares at them. "That was unnecessary. Rest, Juno, don't worry about me."

"Like hell I will -"

"I wonder how much longer your thief will be able to insist that he's fine, Juno Steel."

"Juno." His voice is so soothing; a stark, deliberate contrast to Miasma's rasping tone. It makes my name sound like something precious, something as comforting for him to say as it is for me to hear. And it makes me furious that I can't return the favor. "Juno, don't you dare push yourself on my behalf, you understand me?"

"Look. We're almost at the end. Let's just. Finish it, and our buddy Miasma can take us out of here and shoot us somewhere down that hall, right?"

Miasma's face twists in a sickening approximation of a smile. "You'd like that, wouldn't you, Juno Steel. It's written on you plain as day."

If Nureyev wasn't here, wasn't _looking_ at me like his heart was finally breaking, I probably would have agreed with her. Or at least attempted a joke. Because I _would_ like that. How long had I been hoping that the next card would be the last, that she would be ready to shoot me and undoubtedly give Nureyev the chance he needed to escape? I want to say it's recent but that's too dishonest even just in my head. It was probably around the third card.

"Juno, what is she talking about?"

But, of course, Nureyev _is_ here, _is_ looking at me like that. By pure coincidence his eyes glance across mine, just for a moment before continuing their circuit around the room. And with that look on his face - I _have_ to lie.

"I think you're projecting a little, Miasma. That's what _you'd_ like. And I should know, I'm the one with the mind reading powers -"

"You are wasting my time."

"You sure about that? You're the one who brought it up, seems kinda like you're the - okay, _okay_ , don't hurt him over that, goddamnit. Let him give me something to work with."

Now that I'd been so close, the sound of the card turning is miles away. My body and mind protest as I try to look, and at the same time my newly built internal clock starts ticking down to when Nureyev will scream in pain. I try, and try, and panic because I can't _see_.

And then I catch his lips moving out of the corner of my eye. Mouthing something to himself. _Yellow -_ "Yellow. Yellow square."

I don't realize how stupid that was until after I've done it.

Miasma growls, an inhuman, ugly noise that seems to come from deeper inside her than her throat. She hits the button and holds it down, the plastic creaking in her grip. The clinical disinterest is gone; this hurt that she's inflicting on him is personal. The seconds stretch out and Nureyev runs out of breath, and _still_ , she holds the button. "Stop," I beg. "Stop, goddamnit, you're gonna kill him!"

She lets up, but Nureyev doesn't slump forward, or backward. His body stays rigid, twitching occasionally. Miasma pulls the microphone picking up our voices for him right up to her mouth and rasps, " _That_ is what happens. When you cross me. When you trivialize my work. Do you understand, _thief_?"

Peter's still seizing. "Don't think he can hear you, Miasma."

"Then you will have to drive the message home in your cell, Juno Steel."

I don't like the sound of even one of those words. "Cell? Can't you upgrade me to the penthouse? I'm your star mind reader, I'd say it's the least you can do."

Peter groans, loud and vulnerable. "Hey," I say, voice cracking. I try again. "Hey. How you holding up in there?" Another groan. This one is prettier, though, more controlled. "What's my name?"

His grimace smooths ever so slightly. Like he was convinced I'd ask him _his_ name aloud, in front of Miasma. "Juno." His voice sounds as bad as his face looks.

"Yeah, good. And what year is it?"

He blinks, brow furrowed in concentration. "Nineteen -?"

"Not even close. Good try, though." The next part is hard, because whatever answer I get, I know it will hurt. Either because it's a lie, or because it's true, there's no way I can ask him, "Are you okay?" and like what I hear. But I do it anyway.

"I'm here," he slurs. A few seconds later he adds, "I'm alright," but the damage is done. My gut and chest ache almost worse than my head.

"Yeah. Yeah, you are. I'm sorry."

The assistant unstraps him and hauls him to his feet. He can barely stand, so there's not much he can do to fight them. Which isn't to say he doesn't thrash and scream and call for me. "I'm okay," I try to reassure him. "I'm good, I'll be right behind you. I think."

Another one of her goons emerges from the shadows. To drag me out, I assume, incorrectly. Or, at least not yet. Instead they slap a sensor to my temple and then step back. Miasma stares at what I can only imagine are readings from my brain on her screen. "Hope you're not planning to try to get anything out of me while he's not around. I hear masochism is a hell of an analgesic."

"That was not the plan, Juno Steel. Your reputation precedes you."

"Nice."

"You once withstood a full week in captivity without breaking. Who knows how long you would have lasted, had your fellow HCPD officers not come to your rescue. A fortnight? A month? I don't have that kind of time."

I know which case she's talking about. How could I not? The beginning of the end of my time as an officer. "Yeah, I can be a real bitch like that -"

"And yet." That thing that passes for a smile on her crosses her face again. "On another occasion, you barely lasted an hour. Gave up critical police data to a thug. Your captain was so _incredibly_ disappointed, after your stunning performance not six months prior -"

"I don't see how that's relevant, we all have bad days."

"What was the difference between those two incidents, Juno Steel?"

She knows the answer, as surely as I do. She even adds, "Maybe your thief can start our next experiment missing a thumb."

"Fine, just don't -! Don't get crazy. Crazier." Shame I didn't even know I still had pools under my skin. "The first time. I was alone." I remember it clearly. Enduring day after day, hour after hour, forcing myself to laugh and sometimes actually laughing at the questions. _Getting sleepy? I can do this all day_ , I'd said every time my captors changed shifts. "And the second time, they. Brought in a civilian. I didn't even know them. They were just. Scared. Trying to get home to their kid."

"And how lucky am I that you delivered yourself to me with someone you care for so deeply."

"I'd do this for anyone, I thought that's what we just established."

"You would. But someone who calls you _love_ ?" God, I'd hoped she'd somehow missed that. "For _him_ you would endure more. Be quicker. Push yourself _farther_." The hydraulic restraints around my wrists and ankles hiss open, and the assistant unbuckles the strap around my chest. 

"Enjoy your dinner, Juno Steel."

My legs feel like jelly under my torso, which seems to have packed on a couple hundred extra pounds since I sat down. The assistant has to drag me down the hall, to a room similar to the one we were just in, but set up like the worst prison cell I'd ever seen instead of the worst lab I'd ever seen. Two bedrolls, two mismatched blankets, two trays of water and soup. And Nureyev, sat up against the wall, tearing the sleeve of his shirt with his teeth. "Juno!"

"Hey." My feet get me three whole steps before I trip over them and tumble forward. I'll have to tell them I'm proud of them when I'm not eating musty bedroll.

A hand touches my cheek, as though to try to catch me, but arriving too late. "I'm sorry, love, reflexes aren't quite back where they ought to be yet."

There it is again. _Love_ . I push myself upright - his hand lingers on my neck - and where I should say _thanks_ or _don't worry about it_ or _don't be sorry you idiot_ , instead, I say, "Why'd you have to do that?"

"To. Attempt to catch you? Juno?"

"Call me that. Why'd you have to do that, now she knows we're not just. Associates. Or whatever." _What_ we are, I wouldn't say even if I knew.

"Ah." He withdraws his hand and goes back to shredding his shirt. He almost looks embarrassed. I didn't think Nureyev could get flustered, least of all by that. "Yes, you're probably right. It just. Slipped out, you were making the most horrible noises, you know."

"Sorry -"

"I thought to bring you some comfort, if I could. I hope you won't resent me for it."

"No," I say honestly. "Not for that."

"For other things, though. Yes?"

I swallow and deflect. "Whatcha got there, arts and crafts?" It's even more awkward than it was in my head.

Nureyev presses his lips into a thin line, but doesn't try to change the subject back. "Miasma didn't provide any medical supplies, or offer any treatment. We'll have to make do. Infections can be nasty in circumstances like these."

Finally, my eyes fall to his chest, only just realizing how carefully I'd been avoiding it. His shirt is singed around where the wire was connected to him, right over his breastbone. A damp piece of his sleeve covers the wound itself, but there are traces all around it; thin lines of red etched under his skin. I graze one with the tip of my finger, the touch barely there, but he inhales sharply all the same. "Sorry. That hurt?"

"I'm fine, Juno -"

"Oh, shut up. I didn't ask if you couldn't take it, I asked if _that_ , what I _just_ did, hurt you." I can hardly believe I just said it, and from the slack-jawed look he gives me, neither can he. "We've just. Gotta be pragmatic about this. You know?"

Nureyev closes his mouth and takes a breath through his nose. "It is. Sore. But I think." He lays his hand over mine and presses my palm to his skin.

He arches up into it with a gasp. I want to pull away - _you're_ hurting him _Steel_ \- but he holds my hand in place. "Nureyev!" I hiss without thinking.

And then he smiles. Not so much _at_ me as to himself, pleased that whatever he'd thought was correct. The edges still tinged with pain, and his breathing erratic, but every bit as charming as the first time I saw him. Maybe more so, now that I knew it was genuine. "Yes, just as I remembered. The pressure softens the ache, like any other strained muscle."

"You sure that's not just an excuse to have me touch you."

He flashes his sharp teeth again and huffs a facsimile of a laugh. "I won't pretend it wasn't on my mind. But if I've overstepped -"

"Didn't say that."

For a long moment we both stare at our hands. His thumb brushes the back of my knuckles and I try not to shiver. I focus on his too warm skin under my palm, and if I shudder when he breaks away to dunk one of the little strips of cloth in his water, Nureyev has the decency not to say anything.

The strip he wets is for my face, to get the blood off. He's painstakingly gentle, but that whole side of my face is one big throbbing nerve, and I know I grimace when he touches me. "Am I hurting you?"

"Yeah, but don't get torn up about it. Light breeze would hurt at this point."

Nureyev's brow still creases in sympathy, and it's hard to avoid his eyes when mine are the subject of his scrutiny. "Even so. Can we find the source of the bleeding?"

His thumb pulls lightly on my lower eyelid. It feels like a knife going through my skull. I thrash backward clumsily and knock his hand away. "Hard pass on that one," I groan.

"Juno, I'm sorry -"

"It's fine! Don't. Just don't worry about it. Besides, what would we do about it even if we did figure out where it was coming from? We don't exactly have a laser cutter in here, and unless one of your names comes with a _doctor_ in front of it I wouldn't let you use it on me anyway."

"I suppose you're right." He leans back and chuckles again. "I did actually impersonate a surgeon once."

Disgust rises like bile in my throat and my face twitches into a sneer. "Why doesn't that surprise me."

He doesn't seem to notice, too caught up reminiscing. "It's remarkably easy in hospitals for the wealthy. So long as you move as though you own the galaxy and you are being inconvenienced by anyone asking you to do your job, no one dares question you."

"What the hell does a thief have to do in a hospital?"

I don't miss the way he flinches at the word _thief_ , or the harsh edge it takes as it comes out of my mouth. "A vanity job." As tired as he is, his voice is almost as sharp as it was in the hotel room. "Many preventable diseases are still a death sentence in much of the Outer Rim, and facilities on Rhea are notoriously confident in their security systems. I stole a million vaccines out from under them to prove I could."

 _Oh._ "That's. A pretty good reason."

"I'd thought so. Though I didn't do it for your approval, detective." He winces and rubs at the spot below the burn.

My face is hot with guilt and shame again. I reach out and offer my hand as an olive branch. His scowl softens and he lets me touch him. I find his heart hammering anxiously beneath my hand. To ignore it I mimic him, rubbing back and forth gently. "Good?"

"More than, detective." _Detective_ is soft and tender this time. An unspoken apology to match mine.

We sit in silence as my fingers start to wander. I find two neat scars, white and ancient, and an uglier one on his side, maybe even older, stretched oddly as though he'd grown into it. Two points of entry carved out of him, healed over haphazardly. A pattern I'm horrified to recognize. "You said you remembered. That it was like you remembered."

He understands my fragmented sentence well enough. "It may surprise you to know I wasn't always like this. Relieving the wealthy of their ancient artifacts and high profile illegal charity. Once upon a time, my marks were more likely to be bread and fish than priceless jewels. And I wasn't always the best. There is -" my heart skips a beat as he undoes his belt, but it's just to untuck his shirt and reveal a matching one just above his hip "- another one of note. There was a law against using the batons against children under sixteen, but I had a growth spurt well before then, and they couldn't tell the difference. It was a lesson quickly learned."

I want to press my lips to those scars. To get him out of his shirt and use my tongue to find the rest that I can feel are hiding under thin fabric. Not here, not now, but. Soon. Or maybe yes here, and yes now, because I had the feeling Miasma was going to keep up her little experiment until one or both of us died from exhaustion or the side effects or both. But either way. I don't. Because then Nureyev might ask about mine.

He's already itching to. I watch his hesitant fingers out of the corner of my eye, inching toward my face. I have to stop him, somehow, so I do the only thing I can think to do, and peel the cloth away from the burn.

It's bloodier than I expected. A single circular wound in the center of his chest, bleeding sluggishly from irregular spots where I realize damaged tissue has been pulled away. He had dug it out himself, to keep it from festering. It strikes me that there must be a small pile of Nureyev's skin somewhere in our cell. 

"Juno -"

"I'm sorry." My voice trembles, but at least I'm not sobbing into his shoulder the way I'd like to. It's way too early for that. "I'm so sorry, Nureyev, this is all my fault."

"I - Juno, this is _my_ fault." He's so sincere I have to laugh. "I'm the one who got into bed with Miasma, not you. And then I dragged you in behind me, because I was excited to - work with you again." He reaches for my face again, but I'm not afraid he's going to touch my nose this time. He cradles my cheek, and his thumb strokes the skin next to my eye. It still hurts, but I try not to let him know that. "I'm sorry.

"May I ask you something, Juno?"

I hope he can't feel my pulse quicken through that spot at my temple. "You want a real answer or a smartass answer?"

He snorts; a truly odd and inelegant and beautiful sound. "You asked why I called you. _Love_."

"Yeah, you already gave me an answer -"

"Did you not like it? I had thought to soothe you, but if it caused you distress instead -"

"No," I say too quickly. Nureyev smiles at that, just shy of smug. "No, it was. Nice. I just wish I could do the same for you. You can say you're fine all you want, but that's not nothing." I brush right under the burn for emphasis. "And I don't want to call you _thief_." Even saying it, now, feels like poison on my tongue. I feel Nureyev shudder a little and he drops his hand.

"Yes, I appreciate that. I didn't want to waste an alias on her, since she would accept that I had no name. Not many people will do that, you know."

"Yeah, real heartbreaking -"

"I know when you were playing Daliah you were being facetious. And grumpy, and really an abysmal actor - you should have tried harder, even if not for Engstrom's use of the facial recognition software it would have been obvious you weren't really my darling wife -"

"You going somewhere with this, or are you just trying to boost my confidence?"

"I. Rather enjoyed being called _honey_. All aforementioned factors notwithstanding."

"Honey." I roll it over on my tongue, not angrily or bitterly or any of the hundreds of feelings that had fought for a spot at the forefront of my chest during those first few minutes in Engstrom's room. Just tiredly. With just a fraction of the fondness that word had once held regularly, but some of that affection all the same. It strikes me, too, that he was so ready to give that answer. "Okay. Only - only out there, though."

That gets me a real smirk. "Of course, detective."

"Unless." A thought strikes me, and my stomach sinks. "Unless you think they can hear us in here."

"If there were recording devices here, they would be obvious. There's nothing to disguise them, and they would have to cut into the walls to hide them there. And the carvings are almost completely intact."

"What about our friends outside?"

"No, I wouldn't worry about them. Miasma's assistants cannot speak, and in my brief dealings with them they never communicated with her beyond answering specific, direct questions. Unless she asks them _what is the thief's name_ , they will not offer the answer." He stiffens again, heart pounding hard under my hand. "And she was especially uninterested in such matters."

"She scares you." I'd noticed it out in the desert; how could I not? The soft, vaguely reverent tone that had trembled in its certainty. That tone had made _me_ sure of what I had to do, to save him and trap him here with me.

Nureyev nods slowly. If he's embarrassed of his fear, he doesn't show it. "Humans fear what we don't understand. Miasma is. Alien to me. She speaks often of her desires, and yet I cannot place them. Again and again she spent extravagant amounts of money to hire me, but I cannot fathom why she sent me after the items she did. Not for money or notoriety, or academic use, and she regards them with the same disdain she regards all things. When she told me she wanted the egg, _that_ was the one thing I understood, and I knew she had to be stopped. But the remaining pieces still puzzle me. A person with inscrutable goals, in command of that kind of destructive power - is that not terrifying, love?"

It is. In a vague, far off way that I can avoid dealing with as long as I can avoid thinking about it, sure, it's horrific. But I'm good at not thinking about things like that, and less good at not thinking about the way hearing Peter Nureyev call me _love_ , again and again, the way his skin feels against mine when _I'm_ doing the touching. "Thought we said pet names out there."

" _You_ may have said that, detective, but _I_ promised no such thing, nor do I intend to." Defensiveness sounds like irritation; short and clear with pointed enunciation. He squirms out of my arms and is suddenly very preoccupied with putting another strip of cloth over his burn.

"Hey -"

"We ought to rest. I'd recommend trying to eat as well, if you think you can keep it down."

I'm not confident that I can, but I can't tell how much of my nausea is from my headache and how much is the fact it's been at least twenty-four hours since we've eaten, so I figure I may as well try. The soup is thin, lukewarm, and tastes powdery, like a bunch of nutrients was added in after the fact to make sure that even if we died of infection or exhaustion or exsanguination, we couldn't say she starved us. Nureyev doesn't touch his. "Sour stomach?"

I see him bite the inside of his mouth. "I developed an especially strong dislike of vomiting when I was young. It was a waste of food. Even if we were ill because what we ate was rotten, the older children would beat the younger ones, as though that would discourage us -"

"God, Nureyev, I'm not gonna hit you if you puke it up."

"I had no concerns that you would. But the association remains, and I have been ill once already today. I will be fine."

Somewhere in the back of my mind I wonder why he's suddenly so forthcoming. The business with the vaccines, the scars, and now this? Is it just some desperate attempt to gain my sympathy? Or desperate in a different way? Desperate, maybe, in the way I sometimes am, when I practically beg people to ask me about Benten or mom so I can tell them exactly why it's none of their business. Desperate for someone to know not everything, but what I can stand for them to know.

I set down my gross sustenance and get close to him again. Nureyev tries not to lean toward me, but he doesn't move away again either. I slide my hand into his shirt, starting at the scar on his hip and then working across his belly. _He's already so thin_. "Gotta eat, honey," I whisper.

He shivers, and I know I've won. "You are a manipulative lady, detective."

"Guilty as charged."

He swallows a few mouthfuls, and I take a few more, and then we sleep, curled toward each other, not quite touching. My rest is dreamless, and over too quickly. I wake up to hands on me, dragging me to my feet. Nureyev is being manhandled too, but he only has concern for me.

"Juno!"

"I'm good." I'm too tired to yawn. "I'll see you in there."

Miasma is in the same spot she was when I was dragged out - last night? earlier today? - as though she hadn't moved at all. "Morning," I say. "You look like death. Like you could use a nap, I won't mind -"

"Stop talking."

"Nah, don't think I will. If there's one thing that seems to get to you, it's chit-chat, and if you think I'm gonna sit back and let you zap my friend without being at least a minor nuisance, you didn't read that HCPD profile close enough."

"Your existence is a nuisance, Juno Steel."

"Then my life's work is complete."

Nureyev gets dragged in next. Somehow he manages to make it look like he's being escorted instead of forced. The assistant straps him in; this time the leather band with the conductive plate goes lower on his ribcage and I can't force the image of half a dozen of those burns, creeping lower and lower down his chest and stomach, from my head. If he's thinking the same thing, or if the thought makes him nervous, he doesn't show it. "How'd you sleep?"

"Like a babe in arms." I have to snort at that. "We seem to have a new deck today."

"You've gotta be kidding me." I don't know what I'd expected, or dared to hope, or why I had bothered with either of those things, but cards were not anywhere in the scenarios my exhausted mind had cooked up. My eye starts to throb in anticipation. "Look, lady, if you didn't get enough from that yesterday, I don't know what's going to be different today -"

Nureyev screams. I didn't even see her press the button. "We'll add chit-chat to the list, Juno Steel. Behave yourself."

He pitches forward and spits on the ground. Eyes screwed shut, rocking slightly and breathing through his nose. I lean toward the microphone as much as I can and say, "Easy, honey."

"Interesting. A card, thief."

"Hey, lay off a second, he's gonna puke up that nasty soup you fed us, you want him to choke? No buddy, no cooperation, remember?" Nureyev spits again. I slip into familiar words, spoken as often at me as by me. "It's okay, honey, you're okay. Let's just get it up, alright?" He nods, and then every sip of my hard won victory is on the floor and his hair is in his face. I want desperately to rub his back and stroke his hair, kiss the sweat beading on his forehead. All I can do is talk. "That's it, good job. We get it all? Good job, you're okay." That lie tastes especially sour in my mouth. "You're okay."

Nureyev does that thing were he shakes himself like he's hitting a reset button, forcing himself to act unaffected. There's a bit of a genuine shudder to it this time. "You're very good at that, Juno," he says as he flips a card. "I never took you for the type to have such a calming bedside manner."

"Yeah, well, you end up on the bathroom floor in enough apartments, you pick up a thing or two. Ace of spades."

We keep going. It's not always that easy. In fact, after about ten minutes, I'm back to the pounding headache and the blood and Nureyev is getting shocked for telling me to rest. But he seems to mind even less today, because every time Miasma shocks him I get to call him _honey_ , and every time I do that his mouth twitches like he's trying not to let it burst into a grin. I lose all concept of time and start to keep track of those little mouth twitches instead. Eventually, I lose track of those too.

"I am out of cards, Miasma," Nureyev says after a few hours or a few weeks. "Though I suppose you knew that."

"Assistant. A new deck."

"You're joking."

"I do not joke."

I knock my head into the back of my chair. It spikes pain all throughout my skull, but it's pain I can control. "Yeah, I know," I mutter.

I'm too busy rolling the back of my head against metal to tell what's going on in Nureyev's room, but it doesn't seem like the assistant is putting another deck of cards on the table. They're standing behind him, making some kind of motion with their hand - 

"Fine," Miasma growls. "Dinner time."

My stomach lurches at the thought of that powdery soup. _And_ seeing what kind of shape Nureyev is in up close. "Did you already put in the request, or can we order something new? I'm sort of feeling cloned roast beef." Her eyes, strange and milky and _wrong_ , meet mine, and she lifts the remote. "Or whatever you've got, that's fine."

She takes her readings, and an assistant unstraps me and drags me down the hall. I can't even make a token effort to lift my feet this time, and I collapse onto my hands and knees inside our cell as soon as they let go. Nureyev calls out to me. I raise a finger, and feel the torn skin on my palm. "One second, I'm coming," I say, and start to crawl. I keep my eyes on the floor, and that seems to help keep the pounding behind them to a minimum, which is to say it still hurts like my head had found itself inside the workings of a piece of heavy machinery, but not enough to convince me something is broken. It can't look particularly dignified, though.

"Juno, let me help you -"

"Yeah, how? Your arms are too skinny, I doubt you could lift any part of me on a good day. Just stay where you are, I'm almost there." I take a moment to grab and squeeze his ankle as I pass it. He reaches for my shoulder and my gut does another somersault. "If you pull on me right now whatever's left in my stomach is going in your lap. Just let me. I dunno. Let me get up there myself."

"Noted." 

He offers his hands, trembling though they are, and I pull myself up a little at a time. I make the mistake of stopping when I'm level with his chest. "Oh, _fuck_ , honey." I didn't know exactly what the dead skin would look like while it was still attached to him, but somehow I'd thought it would be less. Corpse-like. Less pale, less like it would be cold to touch. He's popped the blister, revealing raw tissue underneath that's just starting to bleed, and I have to turn away and bury my face in his shoulder. " _Fuck_."

"Would you believe me if I said this one is better than the last?"

"Nope."

He laughs, breathless and pained. "I thought not."

"Looks like it hurts."

"Oh, it does," he says cheerfully. _Cheerfully_. "But I'd prefer that to the alternative. Painful burns can be mended, after all."

 _You really think we're getting out of here to mend them?_ I don't ask.

I'm not sure how long we sit in limbo, carefully arranged around each other, trying to pretend it's not intimate to be near one another while we're in pain. Nureyev peels up the rest of the skin and I feel the sounds he doesn't make as his body tenses around them. I can't look at his face because I might catch sight of the wounds, but I can and do rub his hip and lower back. He hisses, just once, at the end, despite all his effort to keep it contained. "It's okay," I murmur into his shoulder.

Another sound - a sigh, uncertain but ultimately content - escapes him, staggering past his lips. His arm tightens around me. "There's that bedside manner again, detective."

"I don't need you to pretend you're not hurt. I can _see_ you. When you're in there. I know what I'm doing to you."

" _You_ are not the one doing it, Juno," he snaps. For once in my life, I don't take the tone personally. "Don't you ever blame yourself. I don't want you to worry about me." I wonder if he knows how pointless those requests are.

Another indeterminate amount of time passes. I think I fall asleep, or at least let my throbbing eyes rest, wrapped in Nureyev's arms. I blink awake to his hand cradling my head, fingers gentle in my hair. A sensation half remembered that calls up so many different memories and feelings I can't help but gasp as I struggle to push them all away before they can fully form. I hope Nureyev mistakes it for a sound of pain.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. "Have I overstepped again?"

 _Yes_. "No."

"Am I hurting you?"

"A little. But it's. Nice."

"You have a strange relationship with pain, don't you, detective?"

"Not sure yours is exactly healthy either."

"No," he says with another chuckle. "I suppose not. We all do what we must, to survive our experiences."

"Yeah."

His fingers are curious again. They travel down to the base of my neck and find the patch of an old scar, and his chest expands with the kind of deep breath that precedes hard questions. Ones that I would do anything to avoid answering. So I move. Pull away from him and reach up toward his face. My clumsy hand hits his glasses on it's way to his hair, slick with grease and sweat. I push it up and out of the approximation of it's usual style. Nureyev leans into my touch tiredly. His eyes drift closed and he smiles softly. "Okay?" I ask.

"Yes."

"Wanted to do that before. When you were spilling your guts."

"Literally, or metaphorically?"

"Literally. You never had someone play with your hair while you puked?"

"I try to avoid such predicaments. And when I find them unavoidable, I try to be alone for the fallout."

"Well, you're missing out, Nureyev. Best way to lose your lunch is with someone else, preferably someone who's also drunk off their ass, or having a bad trip, or whatever's got your head in the toilet. Or." Or somebody who makes you feel the amount Peter Nureyev makes me feel.

"Or?"

"Somebody who won't judge you, is the point."

"And are you done judging me, love?"

"Hey, I've never judged anyone for puking. Especially not after getting a not-so-healthy electric shock."

"Not precisely what I meant -"

"Yeah, I know." I know. I _know_ he just wants me to trust him. I can't find the words to say that I already do, that I have since we got into the Ruby 7 at gunpoint and don't plan to look back as our hours left on Mars wind down one at a time. “I think I might be.”

Soon, I’ll play too deep in his head and find memories worse than anything my overactive imagination can conjure up, and ones that will endear me to him more than any anecdote about stealing from the rich to give to the infirm. But first, he’ll tighten his arms around me and whisper _I’m glad_ , breath hot and wet on the shell of my ear. First, I’ll fall asleep in his arms, my hand falling out of his hair and coming to rest on the back of his neck. First, every last one of my fears about how it will feel for him to hold me will come true and I won’t even regret it.

And, first, I’ll be dragged bodily from his arms, and we’ll start again.

The third round I start more exhausted than resolute. I try to draw on, to even remember, what had propelled me through that infamous week long interrogation, without success. Maybe I’d had something besides myself to live for - unlikely; I had definitely been younger and more in shape and probably just as stubborn and honestly? That probably would have been enough. It’s hard to think of myself as _getting older_ , but with the throbbing in my head I can almost feel my body breaking down in real time, a decade or more of not thinking about it catching up with me all at once. The only thing stopping me from begging Miasma to hurry up and kill me is the thought of Nureyev looking at me the way he did that first day, and the only thing keeping me from passing out is that he’s too tired to scream anymore.

“I’m fine, love,” he still says, though, after every shock. Slow and deliberate, through a mouth full of cotton and chest heaving with pained breaths, he makes the effort to let me know he’s still with me. It makes the few parts of me that don’t hurt ache with the intensity of it.

“Jack of clubs.”

Nureyev makes that awful whimpering sound that lets me know I’ve failed. “Wrong,” Miasma says.

“King of clubs, then.”

“Wrong again.” I don’t even think she let up on the button in between.

“Queen of clubs!”

“Do not _guess_ , Juno Steel, I am not here for guessing games.”

“Fine, just - just stop it, give me a second.” I realize, as I struggle for breath, that I’m waiting for Nureyev to say something, to tell me he’s alright. A chill runs down my spine, leaving every part of me it touches trembling. “Baby? You okay in there?”

The assistant standing guard over him approaches him, but I can't wait. My heart hammers in my chest and the rest of my body is cold, my fingers numb. I reach into Nureyev's head and find. Nothing. The memory of the card - King of _spades_ , Steel, you _idiot_ \- and residual sensations, still being recorded, but no thought. No _Nureyev_ , composed without composition, elegant even in privacy, gears turning a mile a minute. "No -"

"Assistant! I need him alive."

"No no no no no -"

They give him a shot. Shock his chest twice and put an oxygen mask over his face, then remove it when he lurches forward and vomits on himself. He trembles violently, different from the seizures. He's conscious, can see the room, but his eyes are on some other planet. The whole time I beg him to talk to me. I call for him, _honey, baby, sweetheart, please wake up, I'm sorry, just don't leave me here, you can't just leave me here_ -

"J-uno?" He stumbles through my name, jaw heavy and tongue sluggish. It's the best and worst sound I've ever heard.

"I'm here, sweetheart, I'm right here, you're okay."

"You died, thief."

"I did. Didn't I? It seemed. Appropriate."

"Try it again and I'll kill you."

A laugh bubbles up from deep inside me, almost hysterical. "You've _got_ to know how that sounds, right? You goddamn psychopath -"

"Dinner time."

When I shut my eyes I imagine strangling her. Throwing my weight against her and squeezing every drop of malicious existence out, not by accident or coincidence, but with intent. For a moment I even think to make her suffer, to strap her to Nureyev's chair and squeeze that damn remote until it sticks, electricity pouring into her and never stopping, even as her clothes catch fire and burn this whole damn place to ash. I hope somehow her computer can tell her exactly what's going through my mind in the same moment that it starts to make me sick. Maybe it can. Miasma laughs, and she sounds like Sarah Steel.

Nureyev’s laid out on his side in the cell, a hand pillowed under his cheek and one leg tucked up at an angle. _Recovery position_ , ancient PSAs that still haunt my memories say. From this angle I can’t tell if he’s awake. “Nureyev?” I whisper. I crawl toward him and reach for his outstretched hand. It’s cold and limp, but not stiff - “Honey, you with me?”

Fingers curl slowly around my palm, weak, and almost creaking with the effort. He raises his eyes to meet mine and breaths without moving his lips, “Yes.”

“Okay.” I stretch out next to him and tangle our fingers together, pulling the resulting nest to my chest and slinging my other arm around his shoulders. Trying not to think about what I would have done if he hadn’t been awake.

I want to pull our hands to my mouth and kiss his knuckles. Want to press my lips to his forehead and the bridge of his nose, but I don't. To take care of him, the way he's taken care of me, but I _can't_. All I can manage is to lay my forehead against his, close my eyes and cry, “I’m so sorry, honey.”

“Juno,” he says, and I know he’s about to tell me it’s not my fault, halting and struggling through the words because his _heart stopped_ and I just can’t _take_ that.

“Shh, no talking, baby, just rest. Here, you cold?” We’d avoided the blankets so far, on account of them being old and musty and _feeling_ like filth under our hands, but if they’ll make Nureyev stop shaking, it’ll be worth it. I drag them haphazardly over us and then settle back in. I search across his back for his pulse. Despite everything, it’s strong and steady. _I’ll be fine_ , I can hear in that persistent beat. “There we go.”

Nureyev’s eyes drift closed. At this angle - foreheads flush, noses touching lightly - it would take only the slightest shift from either of us for our lips to meet too. But Nureyev is too tired, and I’m too afraid, so we spend however long Miasma gives us to rest an inch apart, measuring each other’s breathing. I doubt either of us actually sleep.

The assistants come too soon, and from somewhere deep in me I find some fight to hold Nureyev close when they try to pry him from my arms. “You can’t take him back there, he’ll _die_ ,” I scream. “He’ll _die_ , and then you’ll have _nothing_ , you morons! You think I’ll cooperate if you kill him? You’re fucking _idiots_!”

They take him from me all the same. I pretend I don’t see the flash of terror that crosses his face before he can tuck it away. It feels rude to have noticed it at all.

“I’ll tell you what I told them, Miasma,” I say as I get strapped in. Nureyev’s already in his chair, shoulders slumped and eyes closed but markedly breathing deep and steady. “Cut out the middle man. If you kill him? You’re not gonna get a goddamn thing from me, you got it? Not a single. Fucking. Thing.”

“You repeat yourself more often than most people, Juno Steel. And most people are already insufferable.”

“I always was an overachiever. One of my many flaws.” My eyes drift to a table set up in Nureyev’s room, coated in tools I can tell are there but can’t quite make out the details of. They’re going to cut on him, then. Or break bones, maybe, but that’s always a gamble. Her comment about Nureyev’s fingers comes back to me and I start to feel sick. “Drink too much, too observant…” 

“Stop talking. Assistant. Start.”

They nod, and grab a strap of leather from the table. For a second, I think they’re going to hit him with it, but instead they snatch Nureyev’s left arm and use it to secure his wrist to the chair. Nureyev opens his eyes and raises an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you at least ask for my safeword?”

Quick as lightning they snatch a knife from the table and sink the blade into Nureyev's arm. It goes all the way through and appears out the other side in a splash of red. "Hey!" I scream.

Nureyev barely flinches. He reacts more to me than to the knife. "I'm all right, Juno. Still rather numb, I'm not terribly sure you've picked the right method, Miasma -" The assistant pulls it up and out using much more of their weight than necessary, and Nureyev curls in on himself as much as the restraints will let him. A low humming noise seeps from his throat as blood gushes from his arm. "My mistake," he says thinly, "there it is."

"What the fuck, you can't just do that to him all day, he'll _die_ -" But the assistant is already sealing the wound with an organic bonding agent, the kind that usually goes with a heavy dose of painkiller as it sews your arteries and flesh and muscle back together. Unless you're doing first aid on yourself, patching up nicks and scrapes with an over the counter fever reducer and half a dozen shots of whiskey. Both methods are uncomfortable as hell, but the thought of enduring it without either makes my chest tight and my throat hurt. "How you doin' sweetheart?"

"Magnificently," he snaps. He's already turning a card. "Let's not waste any time."

"Finally," Miasma says.

I bite back a hundred snide remarks and slip into Nureyev's head. But I don't look for the card, at least not right away. Instead I focus on the sensations. The burning in his arm is so much worse than I could have imagined; even second-hand it feels like my body is on fire too, being pulled and stretched by cells trying to replicate faster than they were ever meant to. Worse than that, somehow, is the numbness. His fingers are tingling with either lack of oxygen or nerve damage - he can't tell which, or decide which would be worse - and trying to make a fist results in a bare twitching of his index finger. And, in a rare instance of his thoughts having sound, being words instead of feelings, I hear, over and over:

_Fold it up, fold it up, fold it up -_

Desperate. A layering of voices that sound nothing like him and exactly like him. Too young, too old, the same deliberate cadence and not-quite accent. A calming tenor and the cracking of something that will eventually settle into a baritone. And a - a memory? Faded and worn and warped, decades old, damaged from being brought out so many times but real. Calloused but gentle hands on tearstained cheeks. _Fold it up, Pete, we’ve gotta go,_ Nureyev thinks with this other voice, _file under: for future consideration_. He thinks it with disgust and reverence, like a prayer he can't bear to part with even after a horrible revelation about the nature of the church.

A fresh _I’m sorry_ starts and dies on my tongue. I read the card instead.

I might be imagining it, or Nureyev might be in so much pain even when the assistant isn’t smacking his arm with the flat of their blade that it doesn’t matter, but I think Miasma goes easier on him today. Like his heart stopping, her leverage over me disappearing for a horrible minute, scared her. Maybe she thinks I’ll kill myself if Nureyev dies. I can’t say the idea isn’t appealing, but I’ve long since realized it isn’t an option. If Nureyev dies, and I actively seek death or even just give in, Miasma will still have the weapon, and a mounting frustration with humanity that might just prompt her to use it. I have to keep going, as long as it takes to figure out _what_ I can do, and how I can do it, and after that.

After that, I’m open to suggestions.

Nureyev doesn’t look at me when I’m thrown into our cell this time. His eyes are fixed on his arm, squeezing a damp piece of cloth dry and watching diluted blood stream onto his pants in rivulets. The tips of his fingers are pale and tinted blue, while his forearm is red and swollen around the angry burgundy of the wound itself. His right arm shakes almost as badly as the left, and his whole body is tense. I know without having to slide into his mind that he’s in so much pain.

“Hey, honey. You okay?”

He inhales sharply when I touch his chest. Before I can ask if I’d hurt him - I was careful to miss the burns, but maybe - he snaps, “You don’t keep to your word very well, do you, detective?”

I’m almost too tired to be offended. _Almost_. “Excuse me?”

“I noticed it during the Kanagawa case as well. You said you wouldn’t call me by my first name, as I had insisted, and yet, we were barely down the hall before you slipped into it as though you’d never made a fuss, never pointedly called me _Glass_ . And now here you are, in private, lavishing me with pet names just as you _said_ you wouldn’t do. Are you holding me at arms length, or not, detective?”

That’s. Too direct. One train of thought sputters out and another starts up. By the time I actually open my mouth I sound more defeated than indignant. “I’m. Trying to. But you make it really goddamn hard, Nureyev.”

He takes a few measured breaths. _Fold it up_ , I hear again without meaning to. “Well. I thank you for your candor. And I apologize. I didn’t mean to be short with you.”

“‘S’okay. I’ve heard worse.”

“Not from me,” he says softly. His hand settles over mine and he turns sharply to the corner of the room. I wonder if he’s crying. I wonder if he wants to. “I’m. Nevermind.”

“What?” He shakes his head. “Nureyev. _Honey_ .” That pulls a pained laugh from him. “You can’t just start saying something like that, I’m _way_ too nosey to let it go.”

“And yet, I recall you doing something very similar. Multiple times, one could almost say you have a habit -”

“You think you can derail this by calling me out? I’m immune to that, sweetheart, people have been trying and failing for thirty-eight years.”

“I’m not so sure you should brag about that, love -”

“Nureyev.” I drop my head onto his shoulder. His shirt had never been especially modest, but the days of abuse, fashioning it into bandages and compresses has left the sleeve drooping down his arm. My lips brush bare skin as I whisper, “Spill it.”

His chest trembles with that breathless chuckle. “I am. Supposed to be good to you, Juno.”

“Yeah, says who?”

“Me. I decided - however many days ago it was that you saved my life - that I would repay you by taking care of you. By getting us both through this mess. I cannot do that if I am shouting at you.” His gaze drifts back to his arm again and again. To his fingers, not quite closed into a fist. “I cannot do that if.”

I reach for those pale fingers. He flinches, and I murmur, “Not gonna touch it, honey.” One by one, I press each fingertip between my thumb and forefinger. “You feel that?”

“Barely.”

“Well, that’s good, right?” Optimism is hard to slip into, like a dress you haven’t worn since high school that squeezes in all the worst places. It goes on, though, no matter how uncomfortable it is. “They won’t even have to do much work to patch you up if you can still feel anything. And they’re still moving, I don’t know what you’re worried about.”

Nureyev giggles. Weird to think of that sound coming out of him, but that’s exactly what it is; a light and bubbling giggle. “You’re right,” he says, good arm sliding around my waist. “Of course you’re right, love, I’m sorry, that was defeatist and silly of me. Thank you.”

“Just don’t make me do it again.”

“Oh, but I should. You’re quite good at being hopeful, when you set your mind to it.”

“And when I’m the least miserable person in the room, which I don’t expect to happen again this century, so don’t hold your breath.” I can feel a question coming, so I go offensive. “You’ve really got a thing about your fingers, don’t you?”

Unsteady inhale. A nerve, but not in the way I’m used to hitting. “They’re the tools of my craft, Juno. I’m sure you would feel much the same if _your_ trigger finger were to be compromised. Or your mind, your deductive skills.”

“Those are feeling pretty compromised just now, to be honest.”

“I’m sorry.” He _sounds_ sorry, painfully so, voice soft and shaking slightly. _Feels_ sorry, in the way he shifts his body to feel like a full embrace even though he still only has the one arm to wrap around me. My skin burns with the intensity of that simple touch. “I’ve been so selfish today, haven’t I?”

“Shut the hell up,” I say to his shoulder. “She hurt you.”

“That’s no excuse.”

_Isn’t it?_

* * *

Nureyev escapes. Leaves me with a promise and a brush of his lips lingering on my forehead like a brand. I wonder, briefly, after Miasma comes into the cell herself to shout and rage at my prone and indifferent form, to shoot the assistant Nureyev knocked out and instruct their fellows to _get rid of that_ , if it had been his plan all along to have me look into his head just enough that my eye would leak a dangerous amount of blood and make his pleas for help all the more realistic. I decide it doesn’t matter. If it was, it was a good plan. If it wasn’t. It was a nice coincidence.

The assistants come back for me before Nureyev does. I try not to hold it against him. “We’re really doing this?” I ask Miasma. She has one of her masked goons seated in what used to be Nureyev’s spot. _They_ don’t have to be strapped down. “I told you. No buddy, no cooperation. You didn’t even take their mask off, how is that supposed to motivate me?”

“Good point. Assistant.” Her lip curls in disgust. “Remove your mask.”

They do. Underneath is. A human face. It almost surprises me, how normal it is. Short hair, bushy eyebrows, healed acne scars. Orange lipstick. A weird choice for someone who spends all their time with their face covered. Maybe a relic of the life they’d led before they’d sold their voice and became _Assistant_ instead of. Whatever name they’d been given or picked out.

“No good, Miasma,” I say with bravado I don’t feel. “Never worked a case with this one, you’ll have to pick someone else. How about their friend, I’m gettin’ a real strong familiar vibe from that one.”

“You will search this one’s memories, Juno Steel, and you will do it now.”

I can admit to myself, if not to Miasma, that I’m curious. The mysteriously low price she pays for people’s silence and apparently unwavering loyalty is scary in a very familiar way. Like promises the cops make to eighteen year old kids who are desperate to get away from home, if only you’ll sell your soul. I’m more curious and less afraid, but that doesn’t add up to willing and cooperative. “Don’t think I will.”

I doubt Miasma is surprised. “Assistant. An index finger.”

“Yeah, you tried that one on me before, I know you’re bluffing this time -” And the still masked assistant cuts clean through their colleague’s finger, right above the knuckle.

They can’t scream. They can only curl up on themselves, bang their forehead hard against the table. I’d wondered if maybe Miasma had thought to cut their pain receptors too. Apparently not.

I have to close my eyes to block out the blood gushing from their hand. I can’t keep the nausea out of my voice. “What the _fuck_ is wrong with you.”

“I get what I want, Juno Steel. By any means necessary.”

“Yeah, you keep _fucking_ saying that but what the fuck do you _want!_ What the _fuck_ is this _for!_ ”

She looks at me. I can feel her gaze without seeing it, that horrible unsettling thing she calls a face boring holes into my skull. “I don’t expect you to understand, Juno Steel. I expect you to give me the data I need, and then, I expect you to die.” The door opens, and I’m dumb enough to open my eyes just in time to see the assistant place the severed finger in Miasma’s open palm. “And if I need to cut every last digit off of every last one of my associates to get you to do it, I _will_.” She waves the finger like it’s her own, even as she regards it with disgust. “But somehow, I don’t think you’ll make me do that.

“Look at them, Juno Steel,” she rasps. I shut my eyes again. I have a good enough picture in my minds eye as it is. “That’s a human, being hurt because of your inaction.”

“Actually, I think they’re being hurt because of _your_ _action_ -”

“The choice is yours. Just like with your thief. You didn’t let _him_ lose any fingers -”

“Cut it out -”

“I suppose their wellbeing is simply worth less than his. Your pride is worth more than their hands. Which finger should I remove next, Juno Steel?”

“Oh, we’re doing _make me choose_? I’m not playing.”

“You _will_ choose, or I will have you pick two.”

“Not happening.”

“Two, then. Perhaps one from each hand. Which. _Two_.”

“Fuck off.”

“Three. Name them.”

“ _No_.”

“I understand why your thief left you. You are impossible. Assistant. Remove all their remaining fingers.”

The victim bangs their hand on the table. Just once. I don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish, but it makes me look at them. And they look. Afraid. Resigned, but afraid; eyes shut tight and jaw clenched so hard their whole head shakes. Their colleague approaches with a knife, and even they hesitate.

And I give them exactly what they want.

“Fine. Fine. Just. Just stop.”

“You heard him, Assistant.” Miasma has the guts to be smug about it. “Keep the knife close.”

The victim closes their eyes. I’m well versed in finding the doors to people’s memories by now. This one looks like it belongs to a dorm room, dingy and industrial in a very specific way. 

What lies on the other side isn’t nearly as dramatic as what waited for me in Nureyev’s head. Just receiving a letter indicating a debt for school, contrary to a thousand promises and plans and dreams. Seeing an add for an internship in xenoanthropology, not even their major, but it offered enough to pay off their debt. Enough to get their future back on track. Going to Miasma’s office, hearing the process explained but not really absorbing it, going under the knife and then. This. Years and years of _this_ , in this ancient mausoleum, compressed down in a single set of images. They’re not even sure how long they’ve been down here, trapped in the neverending research and calculations. The plans fell by the wayside. What choice did they have?

I wake up in my cell. My head pounds and my cheek stings, so I know Miasma had a field day with my face again as I passed out. I look around for Nureyev, and I’m met only with those screaming walls.

It’s too much, the empathy for Miasma’s faceless goons. Were all of them like that? Probably. The galaxy creates debt the way companies create waste: reckless and careless and without discrimination. An offer from some rich, out of touch academic, just enough to wipe out whatever it was crippling you this year? I can think of a few times in my own life when I might have taken that deal too.

I curl a little harder into myself and bury my bloody head in my hands. “Honey, where are you?” I whisper to the empty room. It’s far needier than I’ve allowed myself to be in at least fifteen years. But I’m alone, and every part of me hurts. It’s not like Nureyev will know.

* * *

Nureyev kisses me. The world doesn’t end, and Peter Nureyev says something corny and hopeful, and takes my face in his hands and presses his lips to mine. He hasn’t found any lip balm in the hours - days? - he’s been poking around in Miasma’s base and he’s at least as aware as I am that he needs it desperately. His left hand is still colder than his right. Or maybe that’s me, the right side of my face chilled while my eye bleeds.

If this were a different kind of story - a fairy tale - Nureyev finally kissing me again, as himself, would be healing. Or at least it would distract me. But this isn't, and it doesn't, and there's nothing that isn't grown in a lab that can distract from having a hole in your head. Or a thousand little holes, each pounding and stinging and aching while your heart pumps away, trying to see how fast it can empty your body of all it's blood.

"We've got to get this under control, Juno,” Nureyev says, shocked out of the romantic and into the practical, and then there's pressure on those thousand cuts I’m nowhere near ready for. Nureyev has to hold my head still while I scream. 

I shout until I have nothing left - which doesn't take long - and then I cry. I don't think it's just from the pain. And Nureyev holds me. Hard enough that my bruised body hurts, but it's a distraction from my head, and I’m grateful for it. He holds me too tight and rocks me and whispers, "I know, Juno, I know I know I know," over and over again. With every _I know_ there's a kiss; for my temple, my cheek, the spot where my neck meets my shoulder.

I pass out at least twice. After the first time Nureyev's wrapped something around my head that feels like it might be his stolen shirt; bulky in all the wrong places and too smooth to be gauze. The second, he's got his arm under my knees like he's trying to carry me off into the sunset, and getting nowhere fast.

"Awake, Juno?"

"Depends on your definition." He kisses my temple, long and sweet. A much needed burst of heat in the chill that’s settled over my body. 

Nureyev rubs my back, and I shiver. "I hate to ask, love -"

"I can walk. Just. Gimme a hand. Or maybe your whole body, that'd probably be better."

"Of course."

He hauls me to my feet and what I can see of the world gets very, very small. Blood pounds in my ears and the side of my head and the front of my head and my neck, for good measure, and that's before even getting to everything below my chest. I know I must be crying again; less from hearing it or being aware than from Nureyev's reactions. Kisses. _I know_ s. I cling to what remains of his disguise, like if I can just grip it tight enough the pain in my fingers could cancel out everything else.

It's not fair. I didn't ask for this. In fact, I specifically asked _not_ to have to deal with the fallout of getting beat up by the last ancient Martian and blowing my eye to kingdom come. I just wanted to stop, to do one last good thing and be done with it. And the universe met me with a deep laugh and a _screw you_. Get more direct next time, coward, how dare you hide behind the facade of the "greater good".

"Almost there, love. Stay with me."

“Where’m I gonna go, baby? You’ve got. All the legs.”

There’s green in my swirling field of vision. A car door swinging open. “Ruby? I need proper dressings and something for his pain,” Nureyev says, like he’s talking to a particularly helpful child. “Quickly, please.”

Stiffly, Nureyev maneuvers me into the passenger seat. I try to stay quiet, but the change in pressure draws blood back to the front of my face. “Oh, Juno, I know.” He presses a careful kiss to my forehead, like he’s afraid his lips could break me. With shaking but precise fingers he hikes up my sleeve and ties something around my bicep. “Just a little longer, my love. It’s just a little ways to Olympus Mons. We’ll get your eye fixed and then we’ll be off this wretched planet for good.”

Panic surges in my chest, strange and vague and unnameable. “No -” 

“No?” I barely feel the needle he slides into my arm. “Juno - this is _not_ the time for self applied first aid -”

“Yeah, I know -”

“This is not a simple line of sutures, I _cannot_ -”

“Nureyev, that’s not - I know that.” I reach for him, and he snatches my hand and presses it to his mouth. He breathes slow and deliberately through his nose, turns sharply to hide his eyes from me. _Fold it up,_ I imagine I hear. Reading his face, not his mind. “I just - we have to go to Hyperion. Okay? We just. Gotta." My mouth is heavy. The pounding in my skull starts to dull, going numb with every sluggish beat of my heart.

"Juno, Hyperion City is ten hours away, are you sure we can't simply -"

" _Promise_ me, honey. Please. Just. Just promise, okay?”

With one last long breath, Nureyev opens his mouth and gives my hand a proper kiss. “I promise, love, I will take you to Hyperion City.”

“M’kay. ‘M gonna pass out now.”

I know he kisses my forehead again. I only think I hear him choke on a sob. _Why do you_ want _him to be crying, Steel?_

* * *

I wake up one piece at a time. The hole in my skull where my eye used to be, throbbing in time with my heart. Bruised, or maybe broken, ribs, too big for my chest. Little cuts and scrapes light up all over my body, plotting out a map with miles of numb darkness between them. Mercifully, there’s no pain yet, even as the promise of it lingers in every spot of bright sensation. The Ruby 7 hums gently under me, like it can tell it can’t drive too rough. And -

“Juno?”

And my hand is burning where Nureyev is holding it.

“Awake, love?” he asks.

“Gettin’ there.”

“Are you in pain?” His voice is small and fearful, like when I left him outside the door. A man just barely holding himself together at the edge of the world. I can’t stand hearing him sound like that.

“Nah,” I answer honestly. A little tension eases out of his fingers. “Ruby knows what she’s doing. Hey, how does a car get painkillers anyway?”

“I can’t say I know. We haven’t been acquainted very long. I’m sure we’ll learn her secrets. Together.”

 _Together_. It’s pointed enough to make me suspicious. Accusations I’m too tired to make spring into my head. “Sounds good. Never did know much about cars.”

I’m expecting a quip. A joke. _With the antiquated machine you drove, I must say I’m not surprised._ Instead, I get, “You didn’t know, did you.” Not a question. Soft and - and hurt. It cuts me deeper than hearing him sound scared. I want more than anything to disappear.

“Don’t know lots’a things. Like really nice sports cars.”

“I’ve been trying to convince myself that you must have known, that it was all part of your plan, and you simply thought it would be funny to make me panic. But you didn’t.”

I could plead ignorance. I'm drugged up enough for it. And Nureyev isn't having a conversation with me he's just. Talking to himself. Confirming his own fears, that I was going to leave him on purpose. I _could_ stay quiet. I probably should.

"Yeah, I. I didn't know. I hoped -" lie "- but I didn't. Yeah. But. I thought I had to save the world, honey."

He brings my hand to his lips, and in this state my skin can't decide if they're needles or marble. "Yes, you did think that, didn't you. You are far too selfless for me, Juno."

I laugh, an ugly snort that hurts my throat. "That's a dumb thing to say."

"Is it? I was ready to let Miasma wipe out every soul on Mars if it meant saving you. I weighed their lives against yours and decided I could live with myself if I let them all die. But not you, Juno. I couldn't lose you." His mouth hangs open against my hand, breath a warm and wet staccato. "I am going to regret this, aren't I?"

Of course he is. That’s what I’d been trying to tell him the entire goddamn time, and in his beautiful misplaced optimism he’d refused to hear. But I’m smarter than that. I know how this goes. I’m going to finish using him up and then maybe he’ll finally understand that I don’t help people, I just suck them dry and leave the husks in my wake.

“Maybe. But. Regret can wait for one night.”

I don’t know if I thought he was going to cry or pull the Ruby 7 to a stop so he can grasp me by my abused coat and kiss me until I pass out again, but I definitely wasn’t expecting him to laugh, to lean over the wheel, my hand still cradled in his. “It can wait longer than that, Juno. Come here.”

Instead of a smoldering, lapel clutching kiss, he pulls me into his lap and holds me, my back to his chest. “You have this, don’t you, Ruby?” he asks. The car chirps at him, and he takes his left hand off the wheel and rests it on top of mine. It still shakes, and it’s definitely cold.

“How’re those fingers?”

“Hmm? Better all the time. A little oversensitive now, actually,” he adds when I squeeze them.

“‘M sorry,” I mutter. The lump in my throat feels like a knife. “‘M sorry, honey -”

“Love, don’t be -”

“Don’t wanna hurt you.” I remember, suddenly, and kick myself for forgetting at all, where his burns are. I try to lurch away from him, but Nureyev holds me tight and moves his body with mine. Maybe, I consider belatedly, it would hurt more to remove the pressure than to leave it. Stupid - “Fuck, Nureyev, I don’t wanna hurt you.”

“Juno, I don’t believe you can hurt me in any way that matters.”

 _I already have_ , I don’t say. _When I made you listen to me die. You’re going to try to tell me that meant nothing?_ Maybe it did. Maybe Peter Nureyev is hardier than I thought. Tougher than me.

I hope so.

* * *

I don’t think I remember getting to the clinic. There might have been a flurry of gloved hands, a kiss for my forehead, Nureyev’s voice. _“Of course I am, I - what do you mean, prove it?”_ My voice, pathetic and weak. _“Don’t go.”_

And then, an instant later, I’m awake. Panic settles over my chest and squeezes tight. My body isn’t ready to hyperventilate, so I lie there, struggling to breathe at a speed faster than deep and deliberate.

“Are you with me, love?”

Of course Nureyev is there. Tucked into my chasm like blind spot. Holding my hand. Sluggishly, I press my other palm to my forehead, and get a facefull of wires. “How long?”

“How long were you under?” I grunt a yes. “About four hours. They want to go back in, to try something else -”

“No.”

“No?”

I can’t keep waking up like this, Nureyev fussing at my side like a bereaved widow. And I’d known, deep down, at least since the desert, if not before, that no one was going to be able to fix me. Something about the way the mass that had been my right eye had pulsed and throbbed and become too big for it’s socket. There was too much blood leaking through the gauze that couldn’t quite hide the deformed shape of it. It had seemed like more blood than a person could stand to lose, and for a while I’d convinced myself that I would pass away quietly in Nureyev’s arms. Not a bad way to go. A close second to going out in a heroic blaze of glory. But of course, I wouldn’t be so lucky. 

“‘S’not gonna work. Waste of goddamn time.”

“ _Must_ you be _such_ a pessimist, love? Won’t you just let them _try_ -?”

“Don’t want any more _fucking_ surgery.”

Nureyev makes the little huffing noise that slips out when he’s trying not to sigh. “Alright. I had already signed the forms, but. Now that you’re awake, we’ll rescind them.”

“Yeah. Rescind them.” 

I roll my head to look at him. In the four hours I’ve been under, he’s found eyeliner and lipstick and concealer and a shower. A new shirt, probably from the hospital department store, buttoned to his throat. The sleeves similarly hide the bandage that must cover most of his arm, but his fingers dance and swirl across the back of my wrist like he can hardly believe they still work. “Patched you up okay?”

He smiles softly. A flick of his wrist has a hundred cred bill cascading through his fingers. “Good as new.”

“You steal that?”

Another sleight of hand and it’s gone again. And my eye is drawn to something else. “Not from anyone who would miss it, Juno, I promise.”

I reach for his wrist and fumble a little - I am _really_ going to regret taking depth perception for granted - and turn his hand so I can see the plain silver ring on his finger. “The hell is that.”

At least he has the decency to look embarrassed. “You know, Hyperion City is quite archaic. I’ve never been to a hospital where you had to be _married_ to visit someone in intensive care -”

“You told them we were _married?!_ Nureyev -”

“Not so loud, darling.”

“And then you stole someone’s wedding band.”

“Yes, Juno, I stole a wedding band,” he says, short and clipped. “Off a person telling anyone who would listen how _glad_ they were that they could finally take their spouse off of life support and with their death, the lovely house their spouse had bought for them and their family that never was would be theirs to sell. Truly, I have tarnished the sanctity of marriage with my egregious selfishness -”

“Goddamnit.” Thankfully I laugh instead of cry. It was about a fifty-fifty split.

“Love?” Just like that, Nureyev’s soft and worried again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap, that was childish of me -”

“Goddamnit, how do you do that?” He shakes his head minutely. “You’re always right. How the hell are you always right?”

“I don’t. Know that I am, Juno.” He strokes my fingernails, my weeks old silver nail polish. “I try to do things I consider good. I try not to do harm, unless to a horrifically wealthy person. Preferably one who abuses those around them. There is an ancient idea called Karma. That the universe will reward acts of kindness, and punish ones of selfishness. I don’t believe in such things, I don’t think the universe cares one way or the other. But I know _I_ do. And I know I can sometimes make a difference. I can dole out punishment in the form of missing wealth and artifacts and. Anyway. It’s silly.”

I want to shut him up with a kiss, but I can’t lift myself off the bed. So I do the next best thing, and say, “You’re so goddamn beautiful, you know that?”

That gets me a wry smile. “What, when I’m morally outraged?”

“All the goddamn time. Stupid gorgeous. Can’t stand it.”

“Hm. Now I know that’s the medication talking. I can feel the lead in this cheap lipstick seeping into my veins.”

He kisses the back of my hand, sharing the heavy metal in his makeup. I wonder, not for the first time, if he’s always been this affectionate. If he was like this with Mag, or before, with everyone he came across. I _know_ he couldn’t have been after that, hopping from name to name and leaving nothing behind but a memory, a missing trinket, a scent. It wouldn’t have been safe. Touchiness, casual affection like this is memorable, and Nureyev could never afford to be any more memorable than he inherently was.

It can’t last, either. I know that too. This burst of tactual intensity is just steam, escaping and overflowing from its pressurized container now that it finally has an outlet. It will burn off, and the embers will cool. And I’ll get used to the cold again, even if it’s worse because the vapor soaked my clothes.

“‘S’not about the fucking lipstick.”

* * *

For all his bravado, for all the promising sharpness of his smiles, when I finally let Nureyev push me into that hotel bed, he’s softer than the sheets. He cradles my face in both hands as he kisses me, sweet and gentle and methodical, like he’s following instructions. A few passes at my lips, then on to my jaw and earlobe, leaving the tacky feeling of cheap lipstick everywhere he goes. I pull him down into my lap by his belt loops, just to give my hands something to hold onto. I’ve never been good at figuring out what to do with my hands during sex, obvious uses aside.

He makes his way back to my lips and starts working on the buttons of my shirt. Takes his time. I know how quick his fingers can be, but he’s drawing this out. I try to be patient and not make too much noise. I coax more than a few noises out of him while I’m at it, running my hands up and down his thighs. He sighs into my mouth, moans and shivers and cups my cheek when I bite his lip. “Guess I’d better stop distracting you,” I mutter.

“Don’t you dare.” He sounds so _desperate_. The mask of unflappable master thief Peter Nureyev cracking just a little more under my fingers. Deliberately, he puts it back on. He finishes with the buttons and eases my shirt off me, setting as much of my skin on fire as he can. Shoulders, chest, flank. “Lie back, love, let me see you,” he says with gentle confidence.

I let go of his hips and he takes hold of my neck, lowering me like I’m something precious and delicate. It’s sweet, even if I know better. He holds one of my hands and kisses it while he explores my bare skin. He hides behind that long kiss. My breath hitches a little as I try to figure out why. I’m slimmer now than I’ve been since I was in the academy, maybe ever; chest and stomach firm and visibly muscled, hip bones jutting sharply over the waist of my pants. “Nothing like a few weeks in captivity to help a lady’s figure, huh?” I hate the way my voice trembles. I don’t need his approval -

“I had rather liked your figure before, Juno.” I can at least take comfort in the fact that his voice is shaking too. 

“Oh. Well. I’m sure the weight won’t stay off long, especially if the food out in the rest of the galaxy is as good as. All that other stuff you were talking about.”

“I hope not. You don’t look healthy like this, love.”

I’m tempted to think of it as teasing, but the way he touches me is so absent. Like it really is just about tracing each one of my ribs where they strain against my skin, and okay, maybe he has a point about being too skinny. “Tell you what, you can fatten me back up as long as you promise to touch me below my waist sometime this year, deal?”

He laughs at me. That deep chuckle that I know is about half real, half performance. “Someone’s impatient.”

“Yeah, I am, you really haven’t been paying attention, huh?”

“I think you’ll find I have been.” He bends sharply at the waist and kisses me, and his other hand slides between my legs to rub at me through my clothes. 

And that’s too much. Fire spreads through my body, in sharp contrast with the sweet little exploration Nureyev’s doing with his lips and tongue. I arch my back and clutch at his and say, “Fuck, honey, I can’t do this.”

He stops. Frozen in place, barely touching, but not fully withdrawn yet. I think it reads as afraid. I’m a little too frustrated to tell. “What’s wrong, my love, what did I do?” he asks.

He’s too good to me, that’s what he did. Which I already knew. But tonight, the memory of everything I’ve done to him still fresh - it’s too much.

“I just need to come, honey, I can’t do all this kissing and teasing and. Not tonight, okay?”

Slowly, he nods. Swallows a sentence or two. “I understand. I just - want to be good to you, Juno. I want to treat you like a princess, like you deserve.”

I don’t deserve that. Especially not from him. “I know, baby. I’ll let you, just. Later. Okay?”

“Is that a promise, my love?” he asks my ribs.

I tangle a hand in his hair. “Yeah, honey, I promise.”

“Quick and dirty it is.” He says it like it pains him, but all the same he pulls my pants down and swallows me with a too-fluid motion that I don’t have time to overanalyze.

It’s gentler than I’d like. And not teasing, but still slow, even if I don’t last long in his mouth. It’s the spirit of it, still so careful where I wanted rough. Still too many kisses instead of bites on the insides of my thighs as I come down, still too soft when he asks, “Alright, Juno?” eyes bright in the dim light of the room.

Better than alright. He’s made me feel almost like myself again. Which isn’t. Great, in the scheme of things, but it’s familiar. I’d rather feel like Juno Steel than some healthier person, someone who knows what they’re doing. I wouldn’t know how to act. 

“Yeah. Good. Come’ere.” His brow furrows, so I clarify; “Your turn.”

“You don’t have to, Juno, I understand you’re tired,” he says as he climbs back into my lap, fully clothed.

“I want to. Come’ere.” I kiss a stain of ruined lipstick at the corner of his mouth and slide a hand into his pants. Nureyev gasps and tilts his hips into my hand so my fingers rub against his folds, where he’s warm and soft and practically dripping. I find myself wanting to bury myself in that heat, over and over again, as many times a day as he’ll let me. And that’s what he wants, Steel. That’s what he wants to give you. You just have to let him - “Good?”

“Wonderful, my love, exquisite -” I push two fingers inside him, and he promptly stops talking.

I’m a little rough with him - I’m out of practice, for one - but my nails are trimmed and clean and it seems like he enjoys it. Rolling his hips with my fingers, gasping into my shoulder, both arms snaked around me and clutching like a vice. And he’d said - I almost laugh into his neck. “Only you’d use a word like _exquisite_ during sex. My good boy.”

Nureyev makes his _biting back a scream_ sound. It catches me off guard; my fingers slow. “Yeah, honey? You’re my good boy?”

“Juno, don’t stop.” His teeth chatter in my ear.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, sweetheart. You gonna come for me, honey? My good boy?” I drag my nails up the exposed skin at the back of his neck. “My angel?”

I don’t know if that’s what does it, or if he was just close. Either way, Nureyev shudders and digs his fingers into my back and swallows more noises. I pull my fingers out as it winds down, and he’s not ready for the smaller orgasm that follows. That one drags a groan that sounds like my name from his throat.

He doesn’t let go of me, even as his breathing levels back out. If anything he holds me closer. That’s the only reason I keep my arm around him, the only reason I bury my nose in his shoulder and breathe the scent of triple processed fabric. “That okay?”

Nureyev inhales, long and shaking. The kind of breath that precedes a long winded, poetic answer, stuffed to the brim with metaphor. And then he lets most of it back out, replacing it with a quick gasp. “Perfect, Juno,” he whispers on that gasp. “You are perfect, my love.” 

He eases himself out of my arms on unsteady legs, kissing my cheek as he goes. “Not that good, I guess,” I mutter.

Nureyev gives me the fondest eye roll I’ve ever seen and kisses me sweetly. “I would rather not start our grand adventure with an infection. I’ll be back to canoodle in a moment.”

“Canoodle.”

“Unless you think you’d like to go again?”

“Nah. Think I’m good.” 

His lips and hands linger on me. I let them. Melt into his kisses and touches until he’s naked and I’m hard and - we do end up going again. Skin on skin, my whole body in flames and my mind. My mind’s somewhere else. Close enough I can answer his questions with a _yes_ or _yeah_ , but far enough away that I’m not quite sure what was being asked.

“... my love?”

“Yeah?”

“You will? I think that tub may just fit the both of us.”

 _Tub_. Tub. I know that word. Not sure how it connects to this conversation, until - “Oh. A bathtub.”

“That’s usually what people refer to when they say “draw a bath”, Juno.” 

“Yeah, I’m not that kind of girl, Nureyev. Don’t really do baths.”

He doesn’t disguise his annoyed huff. “That’s all you had to say. I am not offended you don’t want to bathe with me.” He pulls himself from my arms, and my body has the audacity to shiver.

“‘S weird.”

“Hm?”

“You’re a bad liar.”

“It was not a lie in the strictest sense. I am disappointed, but not offended. They are different.”

“And you’re a pedant.”

“Now who hasn’t been paying attention.”

It takes as long to get the bath fill as it does for me to do as much cleaning as I’m going to. Nureyev pours in something sparkly that makes the whole room smell like lavender. “Certain I can’t tempt you, detective?”

The lavender doesn’t, but the bandages do. He rolls his eyes, decidedly less than fondly, when I go for the one on his arm. “Juno -”

“Time to change it anyway.” The gauze falls away, and I’m left looking at a messy, pale pink patch job, half the cheap bonding agent they’d used out in the desert and half the doctor’s attempts to make the inevitable scar look prettier. A mark on a man who relied on being unremarkable. “That’s nasty looking.”

“I am not in pain, my love.”

“Yeah. I know. Still.” Still. The memory of her clutches at the skin of my shoulders like a prickly creeping vine. Digging into me, slipping poison into my veins. Every time I look at that scar I’m going to think of her. Every time I look at his face, I’m going to remember how it looks when it’s twisted in pain and think of _her_ -

“She’s gone, love,” Nureyev says. Somehow, he’s gotten his arm wrapped around me, and mine around him. Our fingers are laced together. He’s still wearing that stupid stolen wedding ring. “She’s gone, and we are here. Together. We _won_.”

“Yeah. We did, huh?” _We won._

I end up in the tub with him. We _do_ both fit; me tucked against his chest, ignoring the even uglier scars just inches from my face.

* * *

“You know, Juno,” Nureyev says, voice heavy with sleep. “Call me a fool if you like, but I think I have fallen in love with you.”

What can I say to that. _You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me._

Something I haven’t said already? _I love you so much it hurts to look at you, hurts to know you’re looking at me. I didn’t know I could love anyone like this anymore. I thought that part of me was dead and buried, but seeing you digs it up a little more every day. Soon it’s going to be able to breathe again, and what’s going to happen to me when it finally gets air?_

What does he _want_ me to say. _I’m in love with you too._

“If you’re a fool,” I settle on, “that makes two of us.”

* * *

He’s roused by a dip in the bed. Motion, then stillness, and sounds so soft he’s hardly sure he hears them. Clothing, boot laces. The metal on metal chiming of a belt buckle is a thunderstorm in the quiet.

He knows what’s happening. He’d prepared for it.

He whispers Juno’s name into the dark all the same. The door shuts, and Juno doesn’t come back to bed.

He reaches for the indentation left in the sheets. Already cold, not minutes without a body. Hours, he’s sure they’d lied together, Juno tracing patterns into his skin. He can’t be sure it wasn’t a dream.

Needles form in his throat before he can stop them. _Fold it up_ , he thinks. But his mind can’t fit everything it needs into the box. It’s too difficult to tell where the sprawling mess that is his relationship with Juno Steel is just a job and where it is. More.

Their time in captivity, what little remains out in the open - the warmth of Juno’s skin on his, the brush of lips against his shoulder, kept in the forefront of his mind to be replayed as a comfort - that can go, certainly. And their job on the train, that clearly wasn’t simply professional either. Juno sliding into bed next to him, the first of his walls coming back down. “Tuck it all in,” he murmurs as he grounds himself in the smell of drying sweat.

Their first kiss has to go. How many times had he replayed that kiss? Tried to place the subtle flavor of the whiskey in Juno’s mouth? Enough to memorize the texture of Juno’s chapped lips. Enough to imagine that Juno hadn’t pulled away, to imagine exactly what he would have done to the lady - _All of it, Nureyev._

The thought sounds like Juno. It pulls a sob from his chest. His own name has become a hairpin trigger in his mind, a trap tied to the newest folder already precariously full and teetering on the edge of it’s stack. Like another voice, another part of his name, much more secure in its prison.

At last, he’s gotten all of it. What remains of Juno Steel is:

An easy mark.

A good man.

A reliable, predictable associate, easy to trick and easier to use.

A nuisance of a private detective.

A lady he works well with.

A distraction.

A sheen of sweat on his skin.

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings:  
> Physical and psychological torture  
> Electric shocks  
> Burns  
> Eye trauma  
> Seizures  
> Vomiting  
> Cardiac arrest  
> Mild gore  
> Dismemberment  
> Unhealthy sex (specifically lack of communication from both parties)
> 
> I'm barely on tungle anymore but my handle is butlookatthenexus and on twitter with Ace @Baker_Consider. Also lurking several places on discord, but mostly too shy to talk just yet, be patient with me.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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